The Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine will help draw together the strengths of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as a key site for educating physicians about the culture of medicine and the study of healthcare within broader social contexts. As an interfaculty program, the Center will help create opportunities for talented humanistic and social science scholars across Johns Hopkins to play a role in the broader education of Johns Hopkins University medical students.
The Center will also act as a home for the interdisciplinary training of doctoral students, residents, and fellows across multiple schools at Johns Hopkins whose work touches on the social contexts of health and healing. Through KSAS, JHBSPH, and JHUSOM, the Center will host a cohort of doctoral fellows per year and support their research and professional development. While in residence, doctoral fellows would contribute to the life of the Center and develop an enriched perspective on their own research, an increased ability to find traction between their social science or humanistic research and the realities of clinical medicine and health policy.
Graduate research activities will be linked to advancing undergraduate and undergraduate medical education. Graduate fellows are all engaged in teaching an original small-group class for undergraduates in the social sciences of health and medical humanities, supporting the new undergraduate concentration in Medicine, Science, and Humanities. The Center will also help promote the summer and term-time research of medical students pursuing medical humanities and/or social science research projects as part of the Scholarly Concentrations program.